


Redolence

by Lexalicious70



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Eliot is a mess, Headcanon prompt, M/M, queliot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 08:26:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10715796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexalicious70/pseuds/Lexalicious70
Summary: When Eliot and Quentin are separated by the death of all magic, Eliot will do anything to remember the scent of the man he loves.





	Redolence

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is in response to a headcanon I posted on Tumblr and then ruined lives because of it. Feedback is magic: enjoy!

**Redolence**

Quentin Coldwater smelled like paper. 

It wasn’t a scent everyone would recognize, not unless they spent a lot of time in libraries or secondhand bookstores, inhaling the mixed odors of fading ink and aging paper each time a book was opened. This was the scent that constantly clung to Quentin: the smell of his aging but well-loved Fillory books, packs of playing cards both old and new, leather-bound journals filled with spells in his small and sometimes arcane handwriting, and as Eliot stepped into Quentin’s bedchamber at Whitespire, the smell enveloped him. He shut the heavy wooden door and pulled off his long black boots so his footsteps didn’t echo on the stone floor and wake Margo, who was asleep only one room away. 

The room was exactly the way the Quentin had left it that morning before everything had gone to hell and the old gods had shut off magic, trapping Quentin and the others on Earth and Eliot and Margo in Fillory: the bedclothes pushed down toward the end of the bed, a copy of The World in the Walls on the nightstand, Quentin’s place marked with an old playing card, a line of filled journals propped up on a shelf above the bed. The room was so full of the young magician’s presence that it almost felt haunted. Eliot walked over to the bed and sank down onto it, falling forward, burying his face in Quentin’s pillow. His hand reached out for the Fillory book and then closed around it before he pulled the blankets up and over his head, sealing himself and the book inside. There was little light to see by but Eliot wasn’t interested in seeing the words. He flipped the pages, releasing that slightly spicy scent that he always associated with Quentin. 

Days passed, then weeks. Cut off from magic and from Quentin, Eliot spent more time in Quentin’s room as he tried frantically to preserve that unique scent. Without magic to enchant the room, it was filling with other odors: Eliot’s cologne, stale air, and the increasing smell of unwashed sheets as Eliot spent every night curled up beneath them. Two months later, as the last of Quentin’s scent clung to the pillowcase and the duvet, Eliot ordered a cleaning staff out of the room when he found them there, preparing to strip the bed. He yanked the sheets and pillowcase off the bed, bundling them into his arms, and crawled into the closet with them to fill the smaller space with the faint remains of the smell, where he wrapped himself tightly in them, like an exhausted caterpillar sewing itself away from the world. 

The servants alerted Margo: they felt they had little choice. She invaded the closet, her pretty face twisting into a mask of frustration mixed with pity. It took her and Tick, along with two of their strongest servants, nearly thirty minutes to dislodge Eliot from the dirty bedclothes as he clung to it and begged them not to wash it. They dragged him along the cold stone floor with Margo methodically prying his fingers from the material, and when it was pulled free, Eliot cried out like a piece of soul was being forcibly removed with it. He sunk down, his unshaved cheek pressing against the floor, as the last of Quentin’s scent left the room bare and sterile. Margo’s voice spoke in his ear, but her words were like white noise. He pushed her away as he crawled to Quentin’s bed and climbed up onto the bare mattress, trying to find any trace, however slim, of his friend’s scent. 

Time melted away quickly in Fillory, as did Eliot’s tenuous hold on reality. Quentin’s books began to yellow and unravel as Eliot handled them night after night, flipping through them, the spicy scent turning musty. Margo came to sit with him sometimes but The Mad King of Fillory, as Eliot was now known, couldn’t pull away from the last things Quentin had touched. 

One night in late spring, the door to Quentin’s room blew open, blowing away the loose pages of the Fillory books, which now littered the floor. Eliot cried out softly as some of them caressed his cheek and vanished out the window. The door slammed shut again and a sound began to fill the room. Eliot raised his head as he realized the sound was someone calling his name over and over. Footsteps came close and then Eliot’s head spun as the smell of paper filled his nostrils—old paper, spicy, and the smell of ink and the slick, mysterious smell of new playing cards. Eliot reached out and his hand closed over something rough but firm—the strap of Quentin’s messenger bag. Quentin’s face swam into his line of vision a moment later and then the young magician’s arms were around him, pulling him close, tears making his dark eyes bright. It took a moment for Eliot to realize what Quentin was saying, but then his voice came into focus. 

“—Says the magic is back, it’s back El and I’m here, I’m home, I’m home!” He knelt in the loose pages of his Fillory books, pulling Eliot to him, his warm, curved lips claiming Eliot’s as Eliot wept, coming home himself as he plunged, heart and soul, into Quentin Coldwater’s redolence. 

Fin


End file.
